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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22440493">Shadows Pt. II</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordninja/pseuds/wordninja'>wordninja</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Until Sunrise [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fluff, Gen, Getting Together, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, M/M, Post-Canon, Smoking, good chips are important, so is harry's laugh, with less than one part angst</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 11:34:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,837</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22440493</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordninja/pseuds/wordninja</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"He pulled a wooden match from his dark, shapeless overcoat pocket and struck it against his thumbnail, the bright flare of fire lit up his face for half a moment before it faded to shadows again. Long enough for Draco to see the last five years in the jut of cheekbones and hollows beneath, the hair that fell messily across his forehead with a bit more style than the careless mess of years before. He inhaled slowly, exhaled slowly, and for the next minute or so Draco simply watched him breathing smoke out and in."</p>
<p>Set a handful of years after the first story in the series.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Until Sunrise [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1614763</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Shadows Pt. II</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is another very old thing I found in my drafts and I thought it wasn't finished. I'd written most of what's here, added a line as a placeholder, then a few years later wrote an ending. I couldn't finish the middle under the weight of my expectations, and put it aside and forgot it. When I found it yesterday, I deleted the placeholder line, and voila! It was finished.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The light was black and palest blue, an early morning sky filled with starlight. Sunrise was still hours away. Harry stood outside a pub in London and tossed a cigarette into the air carelessly, catching it with the filter between his lips. He pulled a wooden match from his dark, shapeless overcoat pocket and struck it against his thumbnail, the bright flare of fire lit up his face for half a moment before it faded to shadows again. Long enough for Draco to see the last five years in the jut of cheekbones and hollows beneath, the hair that fell messily across his forehead with a bit more style than the careless mess of years before. He inhaled slowly, exhaled slowly, and for the next minute or so Draco simply watched him breathing smoke out and in.</p>
<p>Harry shuffled his feet slightly, not really going anywhere, and the pub door swung open in a burst of light and color and sound, letting a man and woman out into the night. They laughed together as they straightened coats and scarves, and the woman threw her arms out and spun in a circle, head back and grinning wide.</p>
<p>“Look at the stars, love! A clear night in London, what a treat! Did you brush those clouds away just for me, dear?” The woman looked at her companion, took his hands, and the smile on his face told Draco everything about how in love they were.</p>
<p>“Of course I did, Lainey-love, you are most beautiful by starlight,” the man replied. He started to hum, and they began to swing their arms together as they walked-, but Draco had already looked away. Potter smiled after them with the kind of smile that said he thought they were being ridiculous but in a way that pleased him. Draco never understood Potter’s desire for everyone around him to be happy with their lives, even drunken strangers stumbling out of a pub, but understanding his expressions was something Draco had excelled at for much longer than he liked to admit. </p>
<p>Draco and Harry hadn’t really spoken since Draco was being kept under lock and key, except a nod or the occasional hello in passing at the Ministry, or Diagon Alley, or once at Hogwarts during some ridiculous ceremony McGonegal threw to honor “the heroes of battle”. It was uncomfortable standing there in front of all those shining young faces (so young, so shining, were they ever that small and bright?) until he glanced to his right and caught Potter’s gaze by chance. Draco had watched a small, lopsided smile form on his face, and recognized it for the shared commiseration it was, couldn’t help but return it with a slight tilt of his head in acknowledgment that yes, they were once small and free from terror and pain and the ravages of war. It was a tiny moment, so small in the grand scheme of everything; the years of school and rivalry and war, of nearly killing each other, followed by the year Draco was kept at an Order of Phoenix safe house, watching the shadows grow up the wall, watching Potter watch him, first with distrust, then anger, then something else entirely.</p>
<p>That was what kept Draco in the shadows now, as cold air turned each breath into a puff of smoke, an almost mirror to Potter’s exhalations. That something-else-look he’d seen across the table. The absence of hate and anger, and eventually the openness of possibility. Draco had seen that look the day his life was no longer in danger, the day Harry walked in and said he could go home now, but maybe he’d like to get some chips first, there was a great Muggle place around the corner and Harry was just going, would Draco like to...?</p>
<p>Too bemused to be nervous (or terrified) Draco had walked out into the sunlight he hadn’t felt on his face in 372 days and followed Potter around a short block to a hole in the wall establishment which sold them the best chips Draco had ever tasted. Perhaps willing imprisonment made them taste so incredible. Either way, Draco had bitten into one knowing it was too hot but not caring, started to suck in air to cool his burning mouth, and Potter had started to laugh.</p>
<p>There were entire oceans of things Draco had attached to that laugh, both immediately in the moment and over the years since it happened. It was a source of joy, leaking out from some petrified rock inside him, pooling and growing. Draco could pinpoint the second his new life chose a direction, thoughtlessly, in the moment Harry laughed. The world shifted on its axis as they sat in that tiny, dark hideaway that was completely unlike the one he’d just emerged from. Gods, that laugh. It made him want to be happy, too.</p>
<p>The rest of their time together eating chips was spent in amiable silence, punctuated by the occasional statement by Harry about Draco’s family, his home, his money. He was somehow disarmingly blunt in his words, speaking of things he should have had no knowledge of as if it were nothing, yet telling Draco everything he wanted to know and could not bear to ask.  His mother was well and waiting for him at the Manor, where he would be living with her and have full access to his accounts at Gringotts. Harry delivered most of this information with his mouth full of chips, and Draco would have been disgusted, but mostly he’d been thinking about his own plans, which included not living with his mother in that place that had become hell.  It would never be home again.</p>
<p>Draco didn’t see Harry again for three years. He’d gone to the Ministry for a business permit and his focus was split between ignoring the people who were rude enough to stare at him, and keeping his pace slow enough to be considered a walk. The Ministry never failed to make his skin crawl. He did his best to ignore everything around him as he walked into the lift. </p>
<p>The lift stopped, started again, witches and wizards got on and off at different floors, and Draco had fallen into a kind of trance, unthinking mostly, just staring down at the floor. He hadn’t noticed the moment Harry got on, but the sudden silence and underlying buzz made him look up, right into green eyes he recognized. Harry had smiled at him and opened his mouth (to speak to Draco?) when an older witch with stunningly orange hair and three salamanders on each arm began to speak to him.</p>
<p>“Mister Potter! Had a lovely day at the bog finding these beauties, did ya see them, eh?” She put both arms out as far as the space would allow to better show off the three (rather sallow looking fellows to Draco’s eye) nearest Harry, and Draco had to look away at the expression of alarm on his face.</p>
<p>“Yes, Ms. Fairtree, they are quite, erm... lovely?” </p>
<p>The old witch continued to talk, but Harry had seen Draco and he shrugged one shoulder a little, looking so young, Draco finally released the smile he’d been trying very hard to hold back. He looked away, pretending at least, but when he smothered it down and looked up again, Potter was still looking right at him. Two floors further and the witch exited the lift, cooing at her salamanders and leaving only Harry and Draco. The moment the doors closed behind her their eyes met again and they both laughed, Draco quietly while shaking his head, Harry laughing big and loud, unaware of anything around himself in his mirth, at ease in a way Draco never was. He hoped desperately, before he could stop himself, that Harry would always laugh that way. </p>
<p>Now, as he stood in the dark, Draco wondered if he still laughed with no care for who or what was near. Did he still throw his head back (throat exposed), eyes closed (too vulnerable) and laugh from some deep happy place inside him? Did Draco even care to know?</p>
<p>Of course I do, he thought. He wanted it too much, was the problem. It was bound to go badly for Draco. Nothing he’d ever wanted as much as that ended well. </p>
<p>It was too much, in the end, and he couldn’t make himself step forward, too mired in the past and memories to move. He took one last look before he turned away, his cloak billowed silently around his ankles. He’d only taken two steps before he heard Harry speak.</p>
<p>“You know, I used to wonder...” Draco stopped breathing, stopped moving, existing, everything. </p>
<p>Harry continued in that same tone, as if he were speaking to someone right next to him, having a normal conversation, not speaking to Draco hiding in the shadows. “I used to wonder what it must have been like for you, with me always skulking around, searching you out, watching you from the shadows...” He trailed off again, smiling down at the ground with that stupid face, warming Draco from deep within. </p>
<p>Turning around and stepping just until the tips of his shoes were in the light and no more, Draco folded his arms and sighed as deeply as he could manage. “I always rather enjoyed the attention, to be quite honest.” Draco though his voice sounded steady enough, as close to amused as he could get.</p>
<p>Harry finally looked at him, though he didn’t move any closer. “Is that what we’re being, Draco? Honest?” The old dare was gone from his voice, and in its place was something inviting; a self-assuredness, a confidence that the old Potter never had. </p>
<p>Draco found he couldn’t resist it at all. “Quite.” </p>
<p>The corners of Harry’s mouth quirked up, like he knew, like he had Draco all figured out already. Where that thought would once have sent Draco into a panic, now he craved it, wanted to know what it was like to have someone who knew all the dirty secrets of childhood and still stood across from you, looked at you like you were a man, no more or less. It was intoxicating, and Draco couldn’t stop the smile he felt growing on his face. </p>
<p>Harry finally walked towards him, eyes on Draco the whole way. He stopped when the tips of their shoes touched, and the line of light and shadow cut between was a glaring, shouting Howler of their entire combined existence. For a moment it was too heavy, and everything bad and wrong that could happen was shuffled through Draco’s mind as top speed. It wouldn’t work, there was no possible way it could.</p>
<p>Then Harry reached for his hands, wrapped them in his and tugged, just enough to set Draco off balance and pull him in against Harry, pushing both of them fully out of the shadows. </p>
<p>“This is where I’ve always wanted you, Draco.”</p>
<p>“This is where I’ve always wanted to be.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>There's a movie that came out in the 90's called Finding Minnesota. It starred Keanu Reeves and a lot of other cool people. At the beginning of the film Keanu's character is walking down a road, and he pulls out a cigarette, flips it up into the air, steps under it and casually catches it in his mouth. He keeps walking and smokes the cigarette. It's flawless. He does it multiple times in the movie. I spent the entire summer I was 16 practicing this move. I did it three times. I quit smoking. I still think about that scene. It clearly made it's mark lol.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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